


The Loving One

by asuralucier



Series: Reminiscenza [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Unrequited Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 16:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13978854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: “You are a coward,” he says to me. “But that is all right. I have enough courage for us both.”Annella is pregnant, and Samuel remembers.





	The Loving One

**Author's Note:**

> This is partially inspired by the conversation near the end of the novel where Elio and Oliver talk about Thomas Hardy's _The Well Beloved_. I've put further notes and references at the end for those interested. I know this is a bit different, but thanks for giving it a chance!

My wife is pregnant and I am happy. What I am less happy about is the fact that our house, with only one other room, which is meant to be my study, has become her mother’s bedroom. There is a cot next to the desk where I sometimes sleep if I don’t want to bother Annella. I make good money teaching, supplemented by some translation work, but Annella picked out this house when we first married and is stubborn about moving. 

“We will move when the baby comes or no, when he or she gets a bit older.” She says, “I will make sure my mother doesn’t move with us.” Then, “I’m sorry, Samuel. I know this must be affecting your work horribly.” 

“It’s your mother’s first grandchild, _polpetta_.” I say and she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t mean to complain. I like that someone is always here with you. In case you need something.” 

“She treats me like a child.” 

“You _are_ with child,” I draw her into my arms and settle a hand on her belly. 

“That is not even clever,” Annella rolls her eyes and pinches my forearm. She keeps me right and on my toes.

We sit for a while. I read a recently published monograph on Alcibiades (the author has very kindly mentioned me in his acknowledgements), and she makes me read passages I find compelling. That’s her only criteria. Then she leans back to look at me. “I think if the baby is a boy, you should pick the name. And if the baby is a girl, I already have a name in mind.” 

“What’s the name?” I hope, dearly, that she isn’t going to name our daughter after her mother. 

“Laura,” Annella says using the Italian pronunciation. “I want someone to write beautiful poetry about her. To let her know that she is loved.” 

 

_I have never been to Italy, but I speak passable Italian. Milan is beautiful, but I love it as someone speaks passable Italian. Or no, I tell myself that my Italian is passable. Perhaps no one understands me, it is human nature to be kind to oneself. The greatest cowardice._

_He says my Italian is no good. And he should know. He translates for a living. He is supposed to be studying German literature but he’d rather translate. You translate or you graduate with a degree. You don’t do both. That’s what he tells me. There’s money in it. He’s a pragmatic fellow, wants his fair share of the pie._

_I have never met anyone like him and we meet completely by chance, when he asks to sit in the vacant spot across from me in the library._

_He compliments my script, and later, we share a cigarette outside._

_“_ Va bene, _” He says with a winning smile as he slings his arm around my shoulders. “I speak passable English.”_

 

Annella’s stomach is growing bigger. I buy peanut butter two jars at a time. Her mother is appalled. But it keeps Annella happy.

“You never did tell me what name you were thinking of, for the baby, if it’s a boy.” Annella is scraping at the last of the peanut butter out of the bottom of a jar. We’re in the kitchen and I am chopping things for a stew at her direction. 

I think, “I am not going to get away with naming him Augustus, am I?” 

She makes a flicking gesture in my direction with the spoon. “No. Something short. Something that won’t make our son cry when he reads about himself in history.” 

 

_He asks me if I have a girl waiting for me back home. I shake my head, and then he laughs. “You can get a girl here. I will introduce you to all the girls in Milano. We can visit a bordello together. That’s what you Americans call them, yes?”_

_I am duly impressed by this (both the pronouncement in itself, along with his willingness to use my vernacular) and enquire further. But then I say, “I am only here for a few more weeks. I don’t think it’s very wise.” I also don’t know how I would really feel about visiting a bordello in Milan, especially in his company._

_“That is a very American thing to say,” is his reply. “You have to get into the Italian spirit, Samuel. Fall in love! A few more weeks is plenty of time. But you know, you are a smart man. You are going to graduate in the land of opportunity. Unlike me, I am a loser.”_

_We have been spending a lot of time together lately. Sometimes he leaves his papers in my room, and sometimes I accidentally leave a book at his. I like to think my Italian is improving and the other thing (although he does not like to admit this) is that his English is getting steadily more American. Most noticeably, he is starting to speak slower and I can distinguish words from one another._

_“You translate German, and you speak English,” I say. “You don’t have to be a loser.”_

_“I speak some French too,_ ça va _?” He shrugs. “My thesis supervisor is the worst person. He is obsessed with old authors. He thinks Heine is newfangled, ironic in that modern way he deplores. Heaven forbid if I say to him that I want to write about someone that I really like, say, Zweig. Rilke. He wants me to change tact and write about Goethe or Schiller. Everyone writes about Goethe. He tapes his own lectures and listens to them over and over. Who does that?”_

_“I thought you didn’t attend any lectures.”_

_“I did at the beginning,” he shrugs. “I wasn’t always a loser.”_

_“Well,” I say fairly. “Even if you are a loser, you’ve still got all the girls in the city to comfort you.”_

_His fingers brush my wrist, but then reaches for a stack of loose papers right near my elbow. It is clear that he has touched me by accident. “Yes,” he says. “I do have that.”_

_I like to look at him when he reads, head down, pencil poised. He sometimes chews his lower lip when he can’t think of a word and he raises one eyebrow just so, when he comes across something particularly incredulous. He is expression personified, I think I understand why he’s enamored every girl in Milan._

 

“Wystan,” I say to Annella. 

She frowns at her belly. “He just kicked me in protest. That’s a no.” 

I put my hand against her stomach and I don’t feel anything. 

It’s a busy time. I have an exam to write, papers to grade, manuscripts to peer review. I work in the living room because Annella’s mother is still living in my study. I have offered to buy a better mattress to replace the cot, but she insists that she’s fine. I barely have time to think about names, but I don’t mind Laura. Laura Perlman. It practically rolls off the tongue, even in my accent, which is more American than Annella’s.

“Don’t you dare suggest Hugh next,” she says. “I don’t think he’d forgive you.” 

Sometimes, I wonder if she knows, and is just being kind to me. 

 

_The poet W. H. Auden has published a poem. A friend has asked him to translate it from English to Italian so said friend can impress a girl. It is a weekend and I have followed him to his parents’ home in Bergamo. We take the train because he is too poor to own a car. Losers do not own cars, he jokes. He also jokes, that he has to make the most of home while he can because when he becomes a real loser, his father will disown him. He has journalistic aspirations after this inevitably happens, he assures me, because he speaks quickly and isn’t clever._

_I am uncomfortable with these jokes._

_“I also don’t think the girl will be impressed by this poem, Samuel,” he says, puffing vigorously on a cigarette. “I mean, the speaker is basically saying that he’ll always love her more. That he doesn’t care if she never loves him back.” He reads:_

How should we like it were stars to burn  
With a passion for us we could not return?  
If equal affection cannot be,  
Let the more loving one be me. 

__

__

_It’s stupid. He’s practically shooting himself in the foot. Or she’s stupid.”_

_“Perhaps your friend doesn’t really read English,” I say. “It’s why he’s asked you for a translation.” (And overpaying him too, but that I keep to myself.)_

_I feel another touch to my wrist and this time I know it’s not a mistake because there are no papers near my elbow. I nearly stop breathing._

_“Samuel.”_

_I look at him. It’s hard to mistake his expression for anything other than what it is._

_“Elio.”_

_He takes a hold of me. And then he sees me for what I am too, because he smiles. I know that smile. That smile says that I’ll know better in time._

_“Samuel,” Invitingly. I wonder if he uses this voice to great effect when he goes to a bordello._

_“...I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t think. I.” I don’t know what to say. Finally, I say, “I am not very Italian, after all.”_

_You are a coward,” Elio says to me. “But that is all right. I have enough courage for us both.” He lets go of me and hands me his cigarette._

 

Annella gives birth and it’s a boy. I have a son. I name him Elio, which she approves of because it’s short and he won’t cry when he starts learning about history in school. 

I kiss his tiny hands and his tiny feet in my study when we finally get to take Elio home. Annella’s mother has finally left my study and the room is mine again. Annella watches me from the doorway, wan, but happy. 

“Elio, Elio!" I say and my son smiles at me. “The world is yearning for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from W. H. Auden's [The More Loving One](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7474255) (1957), also referenced directly in the fic. I have looked around for a more precise publication history but was unsuccessful so I am handwaving specifics under artistic license. 
> 
> Annella's poetry reference is taken from Petrarch's sonnets (also about about unrequited love) to Laura. 
> 
> The characterization and some of the dialogue given to Samuel's Elio is lifted (with great thanks and reverence) from Umberto Eco's narrator of _Numero Zero_.


End file.
